


Hype Fatigue

by Caeslin



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28109661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caeslin/pseuds/Caeslin
Summary: Yuuta may not go to Seigaku anymore, but he can't escape hearing all about their tennis matches.
Relationships: Fuji Shuusuke & Fuji Yuuta
Kudos: 8





	Hype Fatigue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the original version of this back in 2011, by which time it was already thoroughly jossed, but recently I re-read it and found that I still liked the bones of it enough to try touching it up. Still so fond of these two after all these years. ♥

Yuuta didn't go to see his brother's games, as a rule. It wasn't like he needed to; he'd get the summary from classmates whether he wanted to hear it or not.

"Can you believe it? Seigaku's Fuji beat his opponent in less than fifteen minutes!"

"Did you hear? Seigaku's Fuji played Kirihara from Rikkai when he was completely blind, and he still won!"

"And then, get a load of this! Seigaku's Fuji invented a new secret counter!"

In Yuuta's opinion, Seigaku's Fuji needed to stop showing off on court and play tennis the way it was meant to be played, without any special tricks, or mind games, or dramatic last-minute reversals where you beat a person's manager in seven straight sets. But of course the odds of Shuusuke choosing to abandon his beloved artifice were as slim as the odds of him starting to give a damn about Yuuta's opinion on anything. 

It was a petty consolation the day Yuuta heard that his brother had, for once, actually lost a match.

"He must have been pretty pissed off," he said, trying not to sound too pleased. "He's not used to losing." 

"Nah," said Yanagisawa, "he actually seemed to be having fun." So Shuusuke had found a way to make even losing look cool, then. 

It wasn't because he cared, exactly -- he knew holding his breath waiting for his brother to change his ways would just result in suffocation -- but Yuuta ended up tagging along with his teammates to Seigaku's next game. And it was just like they'd said. Shuusuke was playing tennis like the sport actually mattered to him. He wasn't holding anything back, he wasn't psyching out the opponent, he wasn't doing anything at all except playing the best tennis Yuuta had ever seen him play. For the first time, Yuuta wondered what had happened to his brother over the course of all those games he had chosen not to attend.

And maybe he should have felt glad, or proud, that Shuusuke was finally showing himself to the world the way Yuuta had always wanted him to. A brother like this was someone he didn't need to be embarrassed about; a brother like this was worth being proud of. But it stung to watch Shuusuke play; it felt like a betrayal of something fundamental.

Yuuta watched the rest of the game, but left before the next match, abandoning his teammates in the stands. He heard from them afterwards that Seigaku had won.


End file.
